Stereotypes of non-native English speakers
In our class, we discussed about the essay:
Mother tongue.
The essay was very skillfully written to
make the readers angry about the truth of ignorance towards the non-native English
speakers. It first talks about funny and light experience of getting ignored
due to poor English- in a very sarcastic way- and then, Tang directly talks about
a really intrusive happening. When the readers are put into a situation of
contrast, they are more likely to feel more emotion.
For this tactfully written anecdote, I got
interested in the subject of “stereotypes of non-native English speaker”.
This topic was very interesting for me as
I, myself, is not a native English speaker. Luckily, I studied in the States
for a long time which made me possible to speak English as my second “native”
language. However, for my mom she cannot speak English fluently.
The “Mother Tongue” written by Tang, was
actually very gripping for me. Tang’s mother and my mom are very similar. Both do
not know how to “speak” fluently; however, both have very complex minds and
knowledge. When reading the essay, I felt very angry at the doctors who ignored
Tang’s mother for her “broken English” because my mom had many similar experiences
like that for also her “broken English”. Back in the States, when my mom went
to my school to get some files, they “refused” and kept telling her that the
files are not available to the parents. Yet, when my dad, who is comparably fluent
at English, came to get the files afterschool, the all of sudden became nice
and polite.
I was wondering why and apparently, there were
reasons to it: stereotypes.
I searched up on internet and found some absolutely
stupid ones;
1.
Non-native
English speakers are stupid
2.
Non-native
English speakers have funny accents
3.
Non-native
English speakers are poor
I was quite surprised after realizing these
mindless stereotypes!
I hope that in near future, people will
have more chance of having to learn different language, and that more people
will start to respect others not from how they speak, but how they think.
Thank You J
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